Tranghese prefers Saturday football for Big East

Big East commissioner Mike Tranghese said Tuesday afternoon that he prefers Saturday afternoon football rather than the myriad of week night games ESPN has introduced in recent years.

If Big East Commissioner Mike Tranghese has his way, neither Louisville nor any other members of the new Big East will be playing much football during the week.

In recent years, ESPN has televised college football on virtually every night of week, including Monday and Tuesday games.

As a member of Conference USA, U of L has played it's share of weeknight games, often to the dismay of fans, the past few seasons. This season, Louisville will play four weeknight games, each televised on either ESPN or ESPN2, complicating game preperation for Cardinals head coach Bobby Petrino and troops.

However, Tranghese said Tuesday that he's not interested in having Big East members duplicate C-USA's willingness to play during the week.

"A lot of people assume we're all of a sudden going to play on Monday's and Tuesday's and Wednesday's," Tranghese said. "But we have a contract right now with ESPN that basically calls for Saturday games and some Thursday's."

"We have agreed in the past to play on a Wednesday once in a while and on a Friday," Tranghese continued. "But I'm personally adamently opposed to playing football on Tuesday. I just think it's ridiculous."

Tranghese said the Big East currently has four years remaining on their contract with ESPN that calls mainly for Saturday games but did express some willingness to be flexible during the next round of negotiations with ESPN.

"I'm not critical of ESPN because they ask," Tranghese explained. "We'll honor our [current] contract and then we'll renegotiate. I think we're willing to do certain things and we're flexible but we don't want to tear away the fan base by not playing Saturday afternoon football."

"I think the fabric of college football is playing on the weekend," Tranghese continued. "When we get into the next contract, Tom and the other athletic directors and I will manage those mine fields. But I'm pretty confident we'll be playing more and more football games on Saturday. That's our goal."